Today is Wednesday the 9th of January, 2008.  Tomorrow will mark one year since I first stepped into the warehouse that became ours for two weeks.  Shooting started only a few days after that, and by the 19th we were wrapped.  Here we are, one year later, two festival screenings behind us, a huge one coming up, and we’ve almost finished the film!   The end, in fact, is scheduled.

I have until Monday night (which I’m sure will become late Monday night) to finish any shots I want to enhance/clean up/invent.  Then on Tuesday the 14th — one year and one day after shooting began — the picture will be locked, and the key thrown away.  Then, it’s off to the sound designer David Wallace for his finishing touches.  I shall meet with David on Sunday the 20th — one year and one day after shooting wrapped — and finalize the sound design.  If it isn’t too late, I’ll head over to editor Adam Miller’s and marry the sound and picture.  And there we will have a film fitted.

Can’t wait for the next movie!

I met with Patrick 2 nights ago and took a look at the fixes and “plus-ing” that he has done to the film and it looks amazing. Little things that have always bothered us are no longer there (the audience will never know they existed), and he was able to add some really cool extras; for example, when Wendell is creeping up behind Dirk, there is a great digitally created shadow of Wendell that ominously engulfs Dirk, motivating him to spin around in surprise.Anyway, the main reason for this blog was to include a picture of myself, Patrick, and Kevin McGuire (voice of Pupsock) taken in front of the Enzian Theatre during the Brouhaha Film and Video Showcase.

“It’s OK. We’ll fix it in post.”

This is the most evil thing you can utter on a set. If a director says this, the VFX artist who actually has to fix it in post will curse every pebble said director has even tread upon. This condition is worsened when you are actually both of those people. Because, you know the evil of it when you’re saying it, but you know you have to say it. And then when you’re dealing with the consequences of having said it, you know why you had to say it. But that doesn’t change the fact that now, you’re sitting in a chair, staying up a bit later than your day job would like, continuing brick walls and smoothing out wrinkly laminate flooring.

When you’re doing a high-concept film, such as this one, with no money, such as we did, one will inevitably come up against adversity. We built all of our interior sets in a warehouse. We had no money for this, but the Production Designer - Ryan C. Wolfgang - used his resources and ingenuity to build some amazing sets. I mean, we had walls that opened up to reveal a secret passage and a knocked out brick wall. But, we were renting this warehouse for two weeks, and weren’t allowed to paint the floor, or glue anything to it. Luckily, the warehouse next door was a flooring place, and Wolfgang got them to sell us some flooring at a great price, and we had a nice looking floor.

However, then I brought in the rest of the crew to actually shoot on it, and the big Chapman-Leonard dolly, the various rigs for getting the puppet to walk the length of the hallway in a single shot, and all the people running across the floor accelerated its aging process a bit. So, we ended up with shots like this (click for full size):

Which I now have to make look like this (also click for full size):

This isn’t the only shot I’ve been doing this on. However, this was the first one, and I learned a lot doing it. I spent the last year learning tons of tricks with After Effects, but whenever I get comfortable something inevitably comes along to make me realize that I’m still only making surface scratches with this amazing program. It seems each new shot I work on makes me learn a whole new art form. I’m so glad I made this movie!

(That was not sarcastic, by the way.)